Improvement in the manufacture of buttons from straw-board



TATES PATENT OFFICE.

IMPROVEMENT IN THE MANUFACTURE OF BUTTONS FROM STRAW-BOARD.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 6,654, dated August 21, 1849.

To all whom it may concern Be it known that I, ELISHA. M. PoMERoY, of the town of Wallingford, in the county of New Haven and State of Connecticut, a citizen of the United States, have invented new and useful Improvements in the Adaptation of Straw-Board to the Manufacture of Dead-Eye Buttons, of which the following is a specification.

The nature of my improvement consists in preparing the said buttons for the reception of a coat of varnish by a newly-discovered, and, as is believed, the only practicable method.

To enable others skilled in the art to use my invention and improvement, I proceed to describe the same as follows:

Take straw-board in sheets of suitable thickness, and out of the same cut blocks of the size required by means of the press and die commonly used in cutting out metallic and other dead-eye buttons. The blocks are then passed into a die, by means of which and a common press the buttons are shaped and the eyes punched. They are now immersed in a composition of linseed-oil orother fixed oil and spirits of turpentine in equal parts, or

parts nearly equal, and when fully saturated the composition is drawn off and the buttons removed in pans to the kiln and baked until they become dry and hard, when they are revolved in a cylinder perforated with holes until the rough parts of the buttons are wholly removed in pans, as before, to the kiln. and

baked at a high or boiling heat until the said coat becomes dry and hard. The buttons being blistered and made rough by the effect of the heat upon the materials used as aforesaid, and consequently of incapable of receiving a smooth coat of varnish, are now placed in another cylinder with linseed or other fixed oil in the proportion of one bushel of buttons to about half a pint of said oil, or a sufficient quantity to prevent injury to the buttons from chafing against each other, and revolved until their surfaces become smooth, when they are removed to the kiln and baked until the oil becomes dry and hard and impervious to the varnish, which is afterward applied in the usual way.

What 1 claim as my invention, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is-

The mode or process of preparing the buttons aforesaid for the reception of a smooth coat of varnish, which process consists in removing the roughness from the surface of the buttons after baking them a second time by revolving them in a cylinder with linseed or other fixed oil, and again baking them until the said oil becomes dry and hard and impervious to the varnish,as aforesaid,allsubstantially in manner and iorm as above described,whicl1 said process is peculiar to the use of strawboard in the manufacture of dead-eye buttons and essential in the use of that material, and whereby an equally-good button can be afforded at nearly one-half the cost of the ordinary paper button heretofore manufactured by me in the method secured to me by Letters Patent of the United States of September 23, A. D. 1843.

ELISHA M. POMEROY.

In presence of- ELIADA SANFORD, RosA S. BALDWIN. 

